This week we move to a 20th century composer of Finnish descent. While most would immediately think of Sibelius, we instead are looking at music by Uuno Klami, who was 15 years Sibelius' junior. Klami was most known for his orchestral works, but often preferred a smaller scale work (even in his orchestral music, he wrote many short works rather than working exclusively in large form symphonic forms). Today we look at an early work for piano, his Barcarole, Op. 5.

This short work comes in at just over 3 minutes in length and follows a basic ABA structure. Klami opens with a simple flowing theme, written in 9/8 time. He starts by outlining a simple F Major chord, with the addition of a D moving us from major to minor and back. The harmonies are open and ringing. After three measures, an A flat appears, then returns to A natural, continuing the feeling of back and forth between major and minor.

As he concludes the first A section, we see an early glimpse at the influence of Ravel on Klami in some unique harmonies as Klami builds to an expected F Major chord, but instead gives us an F augmented chord with rising eighth notes in the left hand. He resolves this immediately back to F Major and leads into the B section of the piece where we experience more turbulence and activity.

The B section is characterized by constant 16th notes and triplet 16th notes, primarily in the left hand, keeping us moving forward. Klami pairs these with syncopated chords in the right hand, before the right hand joins the 16th notes, building to forte chords that lead to even more unison movement to close out the B section at fortissimo.

Klami returns to the opening material, but with a more compact chord structure, at a piano dynamic. We hear a highly modified return of the opening section, before Klami combines his ideas with a syncopated rising figure in the right hand that slowly fades to a triple piano sustained chord to end the work.

We've only been able to locate one recording of this beautiful work, by young pianist Jean Dubé, released in 2012.